


My Friend

by azerblazer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Love, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azerblazer/pseuds/azerblazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.<br/>- Donna Roberts</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I haven't slept all night and now the sun has come up and I typed out this thing; that started when I read a youtube comment about how this guy had loved a girl from afar; but knew she'd never give him a chance and had accepted it. He still loved her, as that wouldn't change.  
> So this came about.  
> One of my greatly adored types of fics/books/movies are ones where the female and the male have an epic friendship. Or male/male epic friendship which is a bit more common. Another of my favorite descriptions is also "platonic love story" used to describe "Treasure Planet" on TvTropes.
> 
> And thus!

“Hello.”

“Oh! Hi?” She pushed a strand of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear; a puzzled smile graced her features. “I see you in the café a lot don’t I? We’ve got the same lunch hour it seems.”

The man nodded, smiling shyly and gripping his lunch tray tightly. “I think we’ve been coming here for two years now, as far back as I can tell.”

A small awkward silence grew between them. The woman started then, gesturing to the seat in front of her. “Please, have a seat. No need to stand around.”

With a small clatter he jerkily sat, back stiff and shoulders in a beautifully straight line that looked painful.

The woman kept on a polite closed lipped smile and fidgeted with her plastic spoon.

Finally, something seemed to snap into place in the man and he blurted out. “I saw you, last month.” His ears were red and she seemed ready to comment, or to voice her displeasure at his apparent stalker tendencies but he rolled past quickly. “You were talking to a young pregnant woman, and afterwards she left with a bottle of the lotion you always use.”

The woman was struck silent. She was waffling between being flattered, and a creeping uneasy sensation.

The man seemed to realize how it sounded and he gestured frantically to try to dispel any discomfort, “No, no I just. Um.” He bit his lip,” I meant to say that I-” _love how you always chose something different from the menu, how you go to sit with younger women and older women who are all alone and silent and you leave them laughing and glowing with your openness and your jokes and your humor. I love how you smile every time you check your phone, and how you take pictures of yourself with ridiculous faces to reply. I love that you seem to unwind when ordering a hot chocolate, and that you always watch the people around you instead of keeping your eyes down. I love your hair tucked behind your ears, how you smile easily and have deep laugh lines suddenly_ _grace your face._

She nodded slightly, urging him to continue. He takes a deep breath, feels his pulse in his ears and his limbs are struck with nervous cold.

“I love you.”

There. It hangs out, two years of dwelling inside his chest and the secret is finally exposed to the air, leaving him light and dizzy.

She has lost her smile and is looking nervous and pained now.

“I’m sorry, but, I have a fiancée.” She says it with an uncharacteristic meekness, and a small kernel of apology and regret.

She is kind.

“I know, he sometimes comes here with you, right?”

A blond man, with serious suits and a Bluetooth in his ear all the time. He wears ridiculous ties.

He orders salads, and frowns at children that shriek too loud; until the woman swoops in to chide him and eases the frown into an easy smile like her own. The man fancies that her fiancée learned it from her. He always kisses her forehead and holds her tightly and freely showers her with adoration and love.

“I’ve seen you here for two years,” He continues bravely, “And I love you. Who you are. What you do. And I thought that maybe you- ah.”

He sticks his hand out, feeling his wrist as heavy as an anchor.

“Would you please be my friend?”  
-  
She goes over to where ever he sits and easily slips in to the empty seat in front of him now. They begin with slightly awkward chatter over the weather, his declaration still hanging over them in a brazen, unapologetic way. 

Sometimes even whole days pass where they don't even talk much besides greetings and goodbyes. Just their own company while they eat hungrily before returning to work at their nearby buildings.

This is how their friendship starts.

Small talks over their current food choices. The weather. The quiet avoidance of a love declaration that was neither rebuffed nor accepted. Easy compliments that slip.

And then they hit upon a milestone. A month. They know each others favorite foods now. She's convinced him to try something different every day on the menu. He's able to name her favorite bands and her best loved songs.

Stilted talks about the weather have slid into animated discussions about crazy weather happenings in other parts of the world.

They've discussed tactics for surviving a zombie apocalypse. They've exchanged cherry pie recipes.

He learned to knit to make a scarf for his mother in middle school. She gave up in high school and instead learned to make expressive stick figures.

Her fiancée gave him shifty looks for months afterwards still.

But he shakes his hand and looks upon them both in a sort of bemused way when they get going on their crazy conjectures about mutant experiments, or the latest thing they've read in science articles that pop up on their news apps. He's invited over to their apartment for movies, where the fiancée reveals his vast collection of ridiculous ties that the woman has never failed to gift him with every holiday, birthday and anniversary.

Finally, it isn't strange to see him at her apartment; and they're both invited over to his for some thick stew for the winter months since his apartment is closer. He doesn't sit alone now at lunch, and accompanies her to talk to other lonely women. All look at him nervously until they see how at ease the woman is with him, sharing inside jokes and including everyone else in the secret so they all laugh until they cry and merely a repetition of the joke is enough to send all of them into fits of laughter all over again.

When she isn't there, sick or traveling, he continues to talk with everyone, strangers and regulars and strikes up easy conversation he remembers the woman starting off with. Not a single lunch is spent alone and quiet, and some regulars stop to chat with him outside the café.

He knits some scarves, simple things with only two colors and thick wool; and gives the one with a lurid orange and blue pattern to the fiancée. A warm brown one to the woman. They both wear it while laying miserably in bed with the flu as he putters around their kitchen making his mother's tried and true recipe of chicken noodle soup.

He spends most of the week by their bedside as they watch old movies and read books and fight about small things and whine about their sickness. All three of them are comfortable with each other by now; but the fiancée frequently just settles back and watches their banter and conversation amusedly, like a spectator in a tennis match.

After all, he is her best friend first and foremost.

The next week it's the woman who drops by his apartment while he sprawls miserably amidst mountains of used tissues and empty cough drop wrappers. The fiancée sends ridiculous cat pictures and some strange memes that have him talking with atrocious grammar if he doesn't check himself.

When spring comes he is faced with a fancy silver invitation to their wedding.

"Will you be my best man?" She asks.

"Even if I have to wear a bridesmaid dress." He swears.

He is taken with to go shopping, and quickly tires of catalogs and swatches of every conceivable pattern on earth. But he still helps her compare velvet and satin table decorations. Because her smile hasn't left her face, and he keeps sending picture after picture to the fiancée of her surrounded by pages and swatches and near tears at certain points.

The fiancée is in an important business meeting at the time, but escapes to the restroom to text back, _"NO VELVET. Don't forget the red wine, choose something fruity and light, I know how you two get with alcohol."_

At the bachelor party he gets so drunk amongst his high class friends and his bride-to-be's best friend and ends up crying into his shoulder with happiness. 

"I just, " He sniffs and covers his eyes with his arm and wiping away any incriminating tears. "All these years, you know? We waited until we were stable and steady and ready. But it seems like just yesterday we were dating still and talking of moving in together like it would be the most important step into our life."

He laughs and feels his eyes well up because they've told him their love story, in bits and pieces and he's become so invested in their happiness, so _entangled_ in that story as well, that just thoughts of the wedding is enough to have him smile wobbly.

He puts his water down, because yes- he does know how he gets with alcohol, and hugs him, with manly slaps on the back and wide grins.

He helps him home and halfway carries him to his own bedroom to sleep off the massive hangover he'll have. Then he leaves to the bachlorette party.

She ends up crying into his jacket, and he merely rubs her back and exchanges knowing smiles with the women around them. 

At their wedding he wears a suit, and holds the rings.

Nobody there think he's the groom's best man. He stands by the woman's side as they exchange vows, and grandly holds out the rings. He's referred to the Maid of Honor throughout the whole night. 

Before the night is over, a lady in a dress that works on the same floor as the woman introduces herself shyly. He dances twice with her and soon finds her humor familiar and warm. 

She needlepoints rude sayings and hangs them all over her home. She joins him and the woman in chatting with all of the guests; most of whom they know from the café. 

When the bride and groom leave in a swirl of petals and metal cans clanking behind with a sign saying "Just Married" in bright bold colors, the lady and him exchange numbers and agree to meet up for a coffee and a chance to show off their work.

They continue on, and he introduces her to his many friends in the café; she is shy and withdrawn, but painfully polite and sincere. The woman texts him to immediately stamp it out of her.

He obliges, and she relaxes more around the constant hustle and bustle of the café. 

The three of them are a permanent fixture in the café when the woman returns, glowing from her honeymoon.

The lazy hot summer has them ordering ice coffees and clustering under the fans in the little café. A bit of the glow has leeched from the woman's skin and she has made a doctor's appointment for that afternoon. They ask but she declines their questions with nervous, "it could be nothing really."

He departs from them, bidding them both a goodbye as they go off to their work.

As he's packing up to go home, he gets a frantic phone call. The fiancée, husband now actually, can't find his wife. She's left her phone and car at the house, and he immediately called him before he started to really panic.

Heart squeezing itself, he drives like a demon until his apartment comes into view; and sure enough, the lights are on. Sending a quick text off to the husband, he races up, leaving his briefcase and blazer in his car. Bursting in, he finds the television on and muted.

There's a plastic pie cover on his kitchen counter. Her shoes are lined up neatly in the foyer. 

She's in his bathroom, half eaten pie in the sink and curled up on top of the toilet.

When she notices him, she looks up; her hair scattered and nose red with puffy bags under her eyes. Her makeup is smudged and her eyes are bloodshot. She looks at him dazed and befuddled before her face crumples and her lips part to make a choked off sound before she scrambles up to cling to him and heave great sobs that leave her almost retching and collapsing from the shivers wracking her body.

He feels a lump in his throat, and holds her tight, helpless to do anything else. In the bathtub are a pile of wrappers and white plastic.

He sits down on the cool tile, smoothing his hand down her back soothingly. Little "shh, shh" and "cmon, cmon, it'll be okay" leave him but he is floundering. He does shoot off a text to her husband.

"Found her. In my house. Give us a couple of hours."

He receives a confirmation and a request to tell her that he loves her.

He relays the message and she begins to sob again.

He moves them to his bedroom, joints stiff with the hard floor.

It's a wandering story, interrupted by bouts of silence in which she stops midway and stares off into space, or to begin crying again.

She hands him a cheap plastic pregnancy test, one of twenty that she bought at the dollar shop. It reads negative.

They all do.

Her voice is cracked and raspy, but she asks still, "Maybe it was a good thing you fell out of love with me. I'm broken pretty badly."

He wipes her tears away with tissue, blotting her cheeks lightly, even though they'll just get wet again shortly afterwards. "I've never fallen out of love with you."

He smiles. 

"I'm still in love with you. I think I'll always love you."

He loves the way she frowns at crossword puzzles, and the way she sighs deeply after eating his mother's soup, the way she cajoles him into dancing with her in the kitchen while spring cleaning. The five strands of silver white hair that are hidden near her temple. How her smiles leave deep grooves on her cheeks and it makes him smile back automatically. She talks easily with strangers and the two of them have made snowmen and snow angels in the dirty slush. They've spiked their hot chocolate and suffered the resulting hangover and lecture from an amused fiancée. They've made soufflés and baklava and fudge and burned all three. They've had disagreements and they've stuck together through them anyway. They text each other 'good morning', and text reluctant 'good nights'. They order each other's food and carelessly share it.

He doesn't think there is anything in this world that would get him to stop loving her.

He tells her all this. She smiles wobbly and sniffs once before complaining of a tremendous headache.

He tries to get some water into her before she falls into exhausted sleep. 

Her husband comes in with his own key. He'd given them each a copy during his bout of sickness last winter. He finds them curled together; he only has to hand him the pregnancy test, his lips thin and he sighs a deep weary sigh as he sees how the news had shaken his wife. He toes off his shoes and crawls on her other side, drawing her into his arms. 

He meets the other's eyes and says nothing.

What was there to say?

-

She's quieter, and she stares at children and baby carriers and pregnant mothers. Greedily and desperately, trying to fill a hole she wasn't aware she had. One mother notices, a middle age lady with warm hazelnut skin and deep crinkles besides her eyes when she smiles. Her two children are happily eviscerating their dinner and she's propped up her swollen feet on the empty carriage.

She waves them over. The woman is uncharacteristically shy, shaking her head politely. The mother won't have it and pretty soon they're seated besides her as she explains in heavily accented English about her third child and the pregnancy up till then.

They listen, rapt with fascination as she describes the morning sickness and the nausea and the odd cravings that wouldn't let her sleep and demanded she have fresh watermelon in the early hours of the day or else.

She grabs their hands with her own strong, warm one and puts them against the soft, tight baby bump.

A gentle push has both of them gasping in delight and grinning at each other like school kids.

They bid the mother goodbye, she hugs and kisses them on the cheeks and grasps the woman's face with warm calloused hands.

"You have a wonderful nature about you, _mija_. You will be a good, strong mother one day."

They leave, and he notices the pained joy radiating from the woman; he wordlessly puts an arm around her proud shoulders. Glancing back, he notices the mother smiling warmly at them and realizes that maybe, just maybe, the mother had known the truth all along.

-

It actually blindsides him, he's spent so much time wrapped up in a life where there is already a married couple, already a relationship, that when the lady; the same shy lady who had a whole champagne bottle before approaching him at his best friend's wedding to start a conversation, comes up to him and asks if they could go on a date.

She is trembling, and her ears are terribly red and her shoulders seem looser and free of an invisible burden.

He agrees.

They go to the museum, where they hold hands and they take horribly embarrassing pictures against dinosaur bones to send to the woman. 

She sends them a sound clip of her laughing for two straight minutes.

-

The season's filter back to when it all started, the autumnal leaves swirling in bright colors as they scratch along the ground. A year later and they're all back at the café, all four of them, with their friends all around and the brisk air held back by the cheery atmosphere and warm smell of food. 

The husband and the lady are slowly bringing the conversation over to sports, both big football fans. He and the woman leave them to it smiling and rolling their eyes at each other knowingly.

They contentedly look around. Before, she'd sat by herself until she spotted someone; and he'd merely taken any seat and stole secret glances at the wonderful and mysterious woman who was extraordinarily kind.

They now have their own table, and everyone always has a greeting or a couple of words to say to them.

She grasps his hands, hers a bit chilly still, and says, "You know...I think I've fallen in love with you too."

"What. No- really?" His cheeks feel warm and she laughs, bright and happy. He'd seen some adoption pamphlets in her bag earlier. Her smiles have been coming out more and more again.

"Yes." She nods decisively, "I love the face you make when your coffee's too sweet. I love how you melt around puppies, I love that you knit my husband horribly tacky scarves. I love that you won't get up when it's Saturday. I love that you always have my favorite ice cream even though you hate pistachio. I love how you always smile back. I love how you stay by my side. You are a constant in my life, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

Her best friend stayed quiet, face serious and contemplative. He nodded and squeezed her hand tightly, softly saying, "I know. I-" He exhaled heavily, smiling into her eyes, "Me too."

His best friend smiled back.

 

 


End file.
